


Team Spirit

by SimplerUser



Category: Homestuck
Genre: AU, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-08
Updated: 2014-01-08
Packaged: 2018-01-07 17:47:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1122645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SimplerUser/pseuds/SimplerUser
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vriska and Aranea compete with each other. It's pretty dumb when you look at it - they're wearing the same uniform.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Team Spirit

**Author's Note:**

  * For [May](https://archiveofourown.org/users/May/gifts).



Terezi looks like crap upside down. Well, really, you think she looks like crap most of the time. Comes from not seeing her own crooked smile in the mirror each morning. You’re much better at it - at everything! But her grinning face peering down at you when you were _trying_ to just get the fuck on and eat your oranges on the nice, comfortable concrete is truly, god awfully miserable.

Her words are worse. “How bad did you lose?” she says. She was there! She sniffed every odor that there was to sniff about the whole fucking business.

“I didn’t lose,” is your reply. Which you say in a demure and controlled manner. Don’t snap it out at her or any shit. You’re fucking _calm_. “Netball is a team sport. We won.”

She drops down next to you with her increasingly frustrating face. Hell, a few blows to her nose would most likely improve it. You’d do it too if it wasn’t for the fit she’d pitch if her glasses were broken. Her stupid, god awful, _piece of shit_ face laughs - _at_ you, not _with_ you, god forbid someone laughs _with_ you - and you’re made a mite cosier when she dangles her arm over your shoulder.You don’t lean into her.

“That bad?”

You sink down against her side. “No.”

She snickers, you punch her.

\---

 

“Satisfied now, Serks?”

“Not overly." You let the ball fly from your fingers and swish through the hoop before retrieving it and performing the action again. “I was probably too hard on her, it’s so difficult when I can’t feel her emotions,” you continue, well aware that Meenah will have tuna’d out after you said no. “I think she does it on purpose, honestly. Keeps them completely unreadable.”

“Whale, I wonder why that is. She couldn’t have any reason to keep your paua outta her thinkpan.” You can hear Meenah rolling her eyes but let your ball swish through the hoop again instead of observing her doing so.

“Even so, it’s unnerving. She keeps everything away from me. We’re so similar, I thought she might open up.”

“If you want to glub aboat feelin’s we can do that but it’s not going to make her like you any more than she does.”

"I am aware," you say and it's because you are. Nothing makes Vriska like anyone she doesn't want to. And you can't make her want to.

\---

 Your next practice can (and was - Nepeta needs to shut her fucking mouth) be described as an impossibly (impawsibly) tense affair (affur). You keep your tongue between your teeth throughout. Losers don't get to speak!

Mindfang doesn't look at you.

Why should she? _Aranea_ showed you up at every turn during the game.  _Aranea_ got Mindfang to smile when her elbow knocked the wind out of the giant hag marking her, spun and shot, foot well over the line of the goal circle without the umpire so much as blinking. _You_ made two shots, missed one and let the other team get five fucking free throws off you. Aranea won that game and won it better.

You fuck up through practice as well. You're good! You know that, you know how to get the ball where it needs to go, force the more stupid (Aradia, Nepeta, Latula) and slow (Meulin, Jade, Rose) members of your team to pass you the fucking ball so you can actually  _do something_ with it. Today, all your luck has run out. Maybe you lost it after that first goal on Saturday. Maybe you're going to be left without it forever! Sticking to crappy luck for losers for the rest of your life and playing second fiddle to someone with the same freakish genetics as you.

Feferi trips. It's your fault. You got under her feet and now she's trying to run around the court with purple dripping down her knee. See, if it was Feferi who won, you'd get it. Feferi has fucking awesome hair, can do whatever the fuck she wants and make everyone else like it. She can run a million miles an hour while she's bleeding. Terezi is the best player on the court, she'd beat Aranea. Hell, fucking _Aradia_  would be able to kick Aranea's ass. You're the only one who can't. And you're the only one who had to.

Aranea keeps trying to talk to you between exercises. So, you make up a fun, fun, fun game. She opens her mouth, you try and pass the ball hard enough to knock her teeth in. Eventually, she stops trying. Just looks at you like you shot her foot with her stupid sad eyes.

Mindfang thinks it's funny.

\---

Mindfang's small smile when she sees Vriska's attempt at breaking your glasses sets a worry moving in your mind. Honestly, it's because you understand Marquise Spinneret Mindfang. There's a connection between you, her and Vriska but it's eightfold stronger between you and Mindfang. Mindfang is pleased.  _Very_ pleased. This is what she wanted. And what she planned. It's what you would have done as well, now you've seen the fallout and her intention is obvious. Vriska never does anything without a reason and is at her best when she's mad at someone in particular. It's a pity you're that one.

The minute practice finishes Vriska flees. To where, you don't know, couldn't guess. Mindfang can, you're sure, Mindfang has years of experience thinking about where people are going and knows Vriska so well without ever peeking into her head.

Mindfang's hand claps you on the back. It's her chilly, metallic one and it sends a shiver down your spine.

"Quite the performer, isn't she?" Mindfang's voice is fond, like you hear from parents to the humans sometimes. Though you've also heard tones like it to pets.

"I don't know that it's a performance so much as a well crafted personality layered over her true emotions. I've found that most people have that layer, though I can't feel it in my usual fashion, I imagine Vriska's runs very deep," you say with a sigh.

"You'll know what I was aiming for then?" she asks.

You do. "Yes. I have to say that-" she claps you twice on the shoulder and heads off to her office without letting you finish. Really rather rude when you think about it.

\---

When your kid's sneakers scrape against the concrete they bring a smug curl to your lips. They work so hard and you can practically taste it. Your girls in particular work until they sag to the concrete. You delight in pushing them to it, they respond so eagerly, Serket blood runs impossibly strong and they can both make it so far.

On Saturday, it's an eight o'clock game. Aranea and Vriska believe it to be an omen but you are beyond such foolish notions, mayhap a tad smug. It's pure and simple luck - helped along with carefully planned timing. This game was always to be the cataylist of this beginning.

You know the outcome without seeing each goal and pass but you keep your gaze level with the ball, smile each time Vriska claws a victory, nod when Aranea makes it up.

Their competition leads the team to victory. The other members help, certainly, but it's the goals that matter and each swish through the net is true music sprung from blue blooded hands.

When the whistle blows, you spread your smile wider, congratulate each of them but save your Serkets for last. Vriska is smug but on edge, Aranea is smug but pretending otherwise. You give the Pyrope girl player of the match while looking directly at _your_ girls. You are forever amused that as soon as that teal blood is in the picture it's Vriska who becomes quick on the uptake. She's straightened up with her teeth splitting her face in a grin at you before Aranea's puzzled frown has faded.

Today was a draw. The next match Vriska will tuck into the lead. And then you will have to see what they need. 

Right now, you clap them on the back and move them onto the path back to school. You have matters to discuss.


End file.
